6 Best Movies About Sleep That You Should Watching Update 03/2024

Movies About Sleep

For those who aren’t Walt Disney Studios, this summer is going to be a rough one at the box office. Other studios have struggled to get their sequels and reboots off the ground while Disney has been on a tear with several billion dollar box office smashes this year (and many more to follow). We’ve seen it time and time again with movies like Men in Black: International in 2019 and King Kong in 2019, both of which were dull, uninspired sequels. Watching a sleep-related film is an alternative to being put to bed.

You can, for example, pick a story in which sleep is an important plot point. Summer nights are a great time to catch a few critically regarded movies that involve sleep prominently. It’s possible that some depict sleep as accurately as possible; others are wholly fictional or based on real-life incidents.

1) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Written and directed by the king of horror, Wes Craven, this picture is widely regarded as one of the best ever made in the genre. It’s excellent because it manages to make something that everyone does—sleeping—terrifying. The film’s antagonist and monster, Freddy Krueger, kills individuals by invading their dreams and inflicting physical harm. This film was inspired by a number of sleep-related deaths, even though Krueger and the film’s basic idea are fictional. When Craven came across some Southeast Asian refugees who were unable to sleep because of their dreams, he was intrigued. Craven was inspired to write the film when some of these refugees perished in their sleep during their nightmares.

2) Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club

David Fincher’s adaptation of the 1996 novel of the same name is one of his finest works. ** If you haven’t seen the movie yet, feel free to skip the next sentence because it contains major spoilers**. When Edward Norton’s character is plagued by insomnia, it has a profound effect on his life. Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, is revealed to be suffering from dissociative identity disorder toward the film’s conclusion. A 2014 study found that those with dissociative identity disorder had worse sleep patterns and poorer sleep quality. The way he acts in the beginning of the movie and the reason for his insomnia could be explained in part by this.

3) The Machinist (2004)

The Machinist (2004)

Christian Bale plays an insomniac who hasn’t slept well in a year and is hence very underweight in this picture. He begins to lose his capacity to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t after an accident involving a coworker. He begins to suspect that his coworkers are plotting to drive him insane by sending him strange and cryptic messages. The majority of people with insomnia will never have to deal with anything like this, so this is definitely an exceptional case. Many persons with insomnia obtain more sleep than they think, or are able to operate well on less sleep. That being said, sleeplessness symptoms are typical in patients with high degrees of paranoia and delusions, according to research published in 2009. Insomnia may be missed as an issue among patients with paranoid thinking, according to the authors.

4) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

This romantic science fiction film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as lovers who are separated at birth. The movie’s plot revolves around two people who use a fake company to remove each other from their memories. Procedure takes place in their sleep, and Carrey spends most of the movie in his dreamworld while his memories are erased. While the representation of technology and sleep in Eternal Sunshine isn’t entirely realistic, there is some truth to the neurobiology of memory. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a wonderful film about love and loss in general.

5) Inception (2010)

Inception (2010)

Taking use of people’s dreams and subconsciouses, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a robber in Christopher Nolan’s heist film from 2010. The concept for Nolan’s film was inspired by the phenomenon known as lucid dreaming, in which you become aware of and even influence your dreams. A person’s dreams cannot be entered, yet the science and technology that monitors dreams is constantly improving.

6) The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix

This film, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with sleep, still merits a mention. It’s a bleak future that Neo finds himself in after waking up in an immersive VR experience played by Keanu Reeves. One of the film’s major themes is the idea of waking up both literally and metaphorically. However, despite Elon Musk’s belief that we may be living in a simulation, there is no scientific basis for any of the technologies in this film. That being said, it is nonetheless a gripping film.